Good income inequality article

Well, I've drifted again into blogging silence. OK. Going to stop it today with a tiny post, one that links to yet another piece of humane, activist journalism from Nicholas Kristof. I had an earlier post about income inequality in NY state, and this article is clarion call for avoiding greater income inequality following the midterm election. It's great, and I want to be able to find it again, to stitch it together with my post, so I'm creating a link to it here.

Tom

My office

Here is a little video I shot of my office sometime in the last few days. It's where the magic happens.

It's been a while

So, I've been not blogging for a while, and I am frankly interested in maintaining a regular practice. Well, that's a part of what motivates me here. The other part is that I realize I am enjoying my blog at the expense of facebook. As anyone who knows me will attest to, I can be a very, very, very, very long-winded person--and being from slow-talking Iowa doesn't help. I have tried to edit the inessentials out with time, with some success, but you know, my desire to preserve meaning is stronger than my urge to foreground what is most essential. I'm a record-keeper, a hoarder, a person who grabs and pockets something before he thinks about how he might use it. I assume I will not immediately grasp the value of something, that it will surprise me and that--a few seconds, minutes, weeks, or years later--I will finally get it. And at that moment, I will reach into my pocket or file cabinet and try to find it. And I will try hard. That is what I can promise. I will try hard. I won't promise anything else.

So, being a meaning-preserver leads me to uncritically collect--and I think that blogging gives me the affordances of time and space in which to uncritically collect. And I like that. With facebook, I don't get this opportunity. I have to be quick; I think about what sentence or two another person could read. It's all very much a drive-by sort of thing.

With my blog, it is different. At this point, I am pretty damn sure that no one cares what I am writing here. I am kind of glad I left this baby silent for a long time because now I can speak and write and post images and videos and not think too much about what an audience might think--because I realize that if I ever had an audience, I must have lost the interest of that audience maybe two years ago.

Maybe the blog, however, is just different because I get to go on and on and on and can do so multimodally.

I can't quite describe it, but I can say that blogs have more affordances than facebook. At least I think they do. And I love that.

I am writing about what interests me, and everyone else can, too.

Last post

I have been thinking about my last post and how I called my recent use of GIMP something I'd "devolved" to. OK. I did want to draw attention to my use of digital tools--specifically, how these tools augment what it is possible for me to do and be; how I can legally take someone else's creative commons image of Napoleon's hat and put it on an official image of myself (this is the one my employer uses, and frankly, I think it's one of the nicer portraits of me out there--which has everything to do with its excellent photographer whom I will leave here unnamed in the interest of privacy). I can wear this priceless hat in Paris in Plattsburgh without getting arrested. In fact, because this image's photographer chose to license this image in such a way that derivations are allowed--which is very generous--the invitation for other uses of this photograph and what it contains exist. What I have done is explored one of these uses.

Now, when I made this picture, I definitely was thinking about how I think it's funny. I have always thought these hats look great, yet I think I might never have the opportunity to actually put one on. They do sell souvenir versions of these and similar hats at places and events that re-enact earlier periods; I know, for example, that they do at colonial Williamsburg. A friend of mine once was videotaped wearing one of these in a shop there--and I can say that because his face is so expressive, and it's live, it's the funniest thing. There he is in summer vacation clothes, in a shop filled with kitsch, wearing kitsch, performing a version of himself-as-colonist. It's wonderful, and it was a moment of comic genius that in my mind will never--as an instance of wearing a hat for comic effect--be surpassed. (Or that's what I'm betting on.) My point, though, here, is that they do sell hats like this and that I've been inspired by that moment ever since I saw it on film.

Now, I wasn't there when they shot that footage. I know it only as a text, but because of that video, it's a memory for me--a memory of watching my friend wearing that hat. A possibility that wouldn't have existed had it not been for digital video--an aperture, thousands of images of him standing in that store, sequenced, passing before my eye at a blisteringly fast speed, creating an object that is a source of joy for me forever. It's a living thing. This is making me think of Marshall McLuhan on what the change from literacy to "electracy" (I think he says that, but I mean, communication enabled and mediated by digital tools) and how electracy recreates the now-ness of orality. And it does. I have never been to Williamsburg, but I have been there--at that moment of watching my friend wearing that hat--many, many times, and as a part of my memory, I always will be at that moment. It's a part of my expanding present, particularly now as I write this.

OK.

So I was as I said working on using GIMP to cut and paste images on images. And I was thinking of how digital tools don't make art in and of themselves. And I was thinking of how my image wasn't art but just me playing around.

I started to think of this: Could I convert this from light play into serious play? Could it actually come to mean something more? Could I manipulate the image further--with text, perhaps, by using "paths" (the tool one uses to create "from the ground up" images to embed into pre-existing ones)--to invite viewers to look for more in this thing?

Well, by itself, with the bicorne hat on my head, it'd be hard for me to have them see anything beyond "oh, he cut and pasted the hat onto his picture." So, at best, this brings up the idea of one function that a photoshopping program has. That's a valuable thing.

But I was interested in meaning something more than that, too. I became interested in a few things. These included

1. troping on some serious art from the past (as new media art often does this--taking something old and remixing it for a new purpose, while maintaining fidelity to some aspect of what it meant in its original context)--I started thinking about Rene Magritte's painting of a pipe that reads "Ce n'est pas un pipe").
2. playing with how an image can be used as a background for text.
3. in the dual reality of being a flesh-and-bone person and being augmented by digital tools--having a digital identity (digital identities--serious, comic, worker, traveler, pragmatic, dreamer of time-travel). (This is something I wanted to get at by showing myself "wearing" this hat that is in a highly guarded glass box. Am I wearing it? Who am I, a digital or flesh-and-bone self? Of course, I am both, but these are not the same and exist in some tension with one another. And I wanted to draw attention to that fact.)
4. how a digital identity is a specific thing and therefore somehow unlike my flesh-and-bone identities--and drawing attention to this fact.
5. playing with what seems trivial so that it's almost impossible to think of it as trivial anymore, yet remembering that I am wearing a hat that looks strange and makes me look starved for attention, vain, etc. at worst or funny at best.
6. showing that a difference between traditional US art and new media art is the possibility of making infinite copies (of a hat, of segments of text).

I would say numbers 5 and 6 are the most important ones for me.

So, with this preamble, let me amble along and post the again modified image of this picture:

Putting GIMP to good use

GIMP is, as many of you I am sure know, is an open source photoshopping program. It's something that for years I used just to crop images I downloaded to serve as wallpapers. As my earlier jockey's encouragement animation shows, I have been working on colorizing, painting similarly colored regions, and more. Lately my uses have devolved into manipulating pictures of myself for comic effect. So I started thinking about hats I'd like to wear, and I started thinking Napoleon. I found out that his hat is called a bicorne hat. (It may have other names.) In any event, I am going to post a photoshopped image of myself wearing a creative commons image of a bicorne hat.

A little check-in

OK. Not much of interest here to most, and in fact, it is a completely extemporaneous posting. Well, today was a good one for a couple of reasons. First, I know my students in my New Media course got very good practice in recognizing and theorizing the meaning of their own stories of being new media producers-consumers today. That was great to see. Specifically, it a was an important time for voicing perspectives, for overhearing from one another--a time where discussion showed its epistemic power. Second, I had time to work on my writing centers article on tutors' choices in sessions. And I can say that the text is still supple to me--that is, although I haven't spent time with it since late this summer, its problems and possibilities are still very much present to me. I don't feel like I have to get out the jumper cables and discover what new beast the old one has turned into. And that is a good feeling.

Fall is coming. It will leave us in upstate NY on Saturday, which may prove to be a fun break, but I'm guessing it won't for me. For some reason, I am looking forward to the cold with some anticipation. I am sure that in uttering something like this I really asking for it.

So I better stop.

All over the place? Maybe, maybe not.

I am fumbling toward learning what to and not to say on a public blog. I am, in the end, a highly private person. But I am also a person who realizes that continued existence requires use of interactive information technologies to promote the enhancement of social freedom. I am, in truth, not sure if I will ever be as true as I could be to the title of this blog--which, for any who do not know, refers to my position as a Writing Program Administrator in a university English department--because, frankly, it may weaken what I can do as an advocate for students and our program. If this makes me seem unethical to you, then that is what it makes me seem. What I assure you is that I am trying to promote the enhancement of social freedom, and I am aware that this is a complex, collective, time-consuming, perhaps unsustainable task, but an infinitely worthy one.

OK. That said, I have been thinking about NY state and SUNY as a system, given that the economic situation of both has been--needless to say--in a tough spot lately. A question I have kicked around for two years is this:

I realize that NY state has powerful corporate interests and a powerful bureaucracy. I do not expect the corporate interests to advocate on behalf of the poor. I do expect the bureaucracy to. How well, though, does the bureaucracy advocate on behalf of the poor in NY state? I ask this question self-identifying as a bureaucrat, as a state university faculty member.

I know that my university is on a mission to celebrate itself as advocating on behalf of the poor in its "The Power of SUNY" strategic planning campaign. One of the guiding assumptions of this campaign is that SUNY must accept and participate in what is to be the "entrepreneurial century." In theory, this refers to empowering local communities, businesses, people to use whatever resources they have in enterprising ways--to build knowledge, wealth, etc.

I also want to say that while we know the US, by pretty much all accepted indexes, has among developed nations a wide rich-poor gap (on this linked page on global income inequality, click on the image of the world at the top right hand corner of the page; note how the US's "peer" nations are doing a lot better than we are--and how, say, there is more equitable wealth distribution in petroleum-rich Russia and Nigeria than in the US), the same is true for NY state itself.

Most people know that these are not rosy times for US, or global, higher education in general--and US, or global, public higher education in particular. These are the times of the privatization of the public sphere. Now, if I may digress, I do not want to connect dots so much with this blog. I want to present related snippets of information. And I want to say I want to look into specifically how these are not rosy times for global public higher education--and what the trends are anticipated to be by experts on this subject. So, today, I did some looking around and found what I think is an interesting document presented by an ethical organization. It is, by name and identifying authors, as follows:

Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution

A Report Prepared for the

UNESCO 2009 World Conference on Higher Education

Philip G. Altbach

Liz Reisberg

Laura E. Rumbley

What I am linking to my blog is the executive summary of this report, which I find fascinating.

OK. That's all for now.

Tom

Remixing on Family Guy

When composing is seen as a social, multimodal activity, we can and do call it remixing. While Family Guy, as a television show, does not satisfy the definition that some use for new media (which involves the use of linked "Web 2.0" technologies for distribution), it is a fun example of a multimodal remix. I often think about how the plotlines of the show are basically irrelevant, a thing noted in the South Park episode where the writing staff for FG is a bunch of manatees in a tank filled with "idea" balls. When I remember Family Guy, then, I do not remember entire episodes. I remember moments when I laugh or am embarrassed for being a part of the audience--like when Stewie and Peter drive Lois into the ocean (embarrassed), when Brian enters the family room with his girlfriend in sunglasses addicted to cocaine (both), whenever Stewie is in drag, etc. They are, most of them, moments and not episodes. Perhaps this is the case with many sitcoms; I guess they wouldn't be funny if we didn't recognize ourselves in them, so they are pretty much always ripped from other sources.

But, with FG and remix, we are forced to admit whether or not we find remixing a thing that requires talent, that is as creative as more "original" storytelling.

I guess I am interested in this because it is only recently that I have really been thinking about interactivity, that narrowing of the roles of producer and consumer, within popular texts. And with FG, it's completely in your face.

Do I like FG? Yes, I love FG. All writing is remixing, and the richest remixes are the best writing of all.

A tiny animation

OK, so I've been working on learning how to use Windows Movie Maker. Just a few minutes ago, I tried to save a little animation to this blog, and then I got antsy, pressing "publish" before the file had actually been uploaded. Sadly, it had some interesting material in it that I don't now have the energy to re-enter. So, I'm just going to post this animation. If anyone is interested at looking at a very basic, three second long animation of a jockey's whip in a re-touched lithograph, then this is for you.

(But this is mostly for me, an experiment in seeing whether or not I could do this.)

The image and sound are both free and legal to use for personal reasons, which is certainly what this is. The image's license can be found here. The sound's publisher requests that no one link to the site. So, I include a citation at the end of this post.

I've been thinking about NY state, and I've been thinking about Saratoga. These two thoughts led me to be thinking jockeys. I did a search for a lithographs, thinking these could be re-touched nicely with the use of GIMP, an open-source photoshopping program. So, with that, I end this entry here.

Tom

A 1 Free Sound Effects. Horses Running. A 1 Free Sound Effects, 2009. MP3.

Never before

OK, so I am working on becoming a more regular blogger. That is not an easy thing for me. I think it may be because I value my privacy a great deal. It may be my hoarding sensibility, too. It may be that I'm old. It may be a lot of things.

But in teaching a class on new media, which I would identify as the use of immersive, interactive, computer-based, communicative tools, I am becoming more and more interested in this thing. This blog that is. And, also, how technology is less likely to be used to manipulate me or anyone else against our own best interests if I actively engage with it.

Some technologies--like mechanical pencils, for instance--I have an undeniable attraction to, one I can't remember not having. Others I am more skeptical of. And blogs are one technology that I am skeptical of, given that it's not always been clear to me whether I can use it to enhance popular freedom or if, in using it, I will be undermining those efforts more than promoting them.

Anyway, I realize these reflections are quickly becoming boring.

[There was some other stuff here. I realized that a post I thought hadn't gone up actually had, leaving me with essentially duplicate content.]

A long time...a year, I guess...

Well, I'm back. If anyone's ever had interest in my blog, that interest has to be at an all time low because this has been dormant for a year now. As far as I'm concerned, it's exactly a year: Surprisingly, it was on the first day of class last fall that I last posted--and today is that day for 2010.

I'm honored to have been entrusted with another two classes--and I'm excited to be a shaping influence within them. I have come to think more and more of teaching writing as having and modeling good judgment, thanks to having read Quintilian last year. When I think of judgment, I am thinking of selective response designed to help a writer become a growing member of a discourse community. What the word, "judgment," communicates to me is how the practice of giving response is an ethical endeavor. And I love that. And I sincerely hope that my judgment may be as good as it can be this year.

I find myself thinking of other things to say right now, but it is a moment where I would be saying to be saying something--not the kind of reaction to objects and/or others that I would like to have inspire me. So I'm going to can it.

Today I break my blogging silence. It's been a year, mostly, since I last wrote on this site, and the reason is simple: so far, my work as a WPA has been something I've worked out locally--in this place (this as in where I am sitting now, not where you are reading this). My suspicion is that it will remain this way. At the same time, with time, I also acquire a language for doing this work, so it may be that I will voice my perspectives on my administrative work more here.

What is causing me to write today is that it is the first day of the 2009-2010 academic school year at SUNY Plattsburgh. It is a musty, late summer day in New York's North Country, and once again, Plattsburgh crawls with life at every turn. It's very exciting.

I am not sure, but I think much of my direction with my blog this year may be to write less as an administrator as more as a teacher. This seems like a good direction, particularly because I am asking my students to write blogs in my class. Following advice from Beach et al's Teaching Writing Using Blogs, etc. (Christopher Gordon, 2009), I am having my students write response blogs this semester, so they will not only write in response to prompts from me but also respond to their blog partners' entries once a week. This will be an amount of work equivalent to what I asked students in my ENG100 sections last year to do, but, given the response blog design, each student will know s/he has an invested audience member other than me looking at her/his work, commenting on that work, and more. It's exciting.

Well, that is it for now. In the first meetings of my ENG100 classes this term, I am having my students add their blog partners and me as readers of their blogs.

One thing I noted today during class: in having my students use for word processing this term Google Documents, when they turn in their work, they will click on "share." Sharing assignments with a teacher--it may suggest a degree of freedom of choice that in this case is not present, but at the same time, when it comes to writing, the work is always personal on some level. We turn in ourselves, to some extent, and that being the case, assuming each is her or his own, even turning work into a teacher is sharing it.

Sharing work. It's a good thing.

Tom

Composition Reading Group: Selecting Readings

What would you like to read in the spring? During December and January, I hope to be able to settle upon a book to purchase for our group, and I am turning to you for your input.

As you know, this brown bag group will meet monthly to discuss a pre-selected chapter from one of our texts. This group may also occasionally host guest speakers/facilitators, such as representatives of the Learning Center and Feinberg Library.

We should be able to get copies of the St. Martin's Guide to Teaching Writing (6th Ed.) for free; so, if people are interested in this volume, that would involve little more than contacting our Bedford/St. Martin's representative, Lori Butcher.

I would, however, also like to order for each of you a copy of one of two books that have been mentioned as possible texts for our group:
(1) John Bean's Engaging Ideas
(2) Donald Murray's The Craft of Revision (5th Ed.) (Thanks for the recommendation, Greg!)

In posting this blog entry, I am initiating a specific conversation on which of these three books you would like to have our group read. As your "vote," I would like those of you who can during late December and early January to provide a brief, written position on which of these books you'd like to have our group read. In formulating your position, I would like you to consider how these books and their tables of address our proposed meetings' themes.

Our proposed meetings' themes include the following:
(1) students’ acculturation to college,
(2) using computers to teach writing,
(3) how to teach analysis and support critical thinking in ENG 100 and 101,
(4) how to teach students not to plagiarize,
(5) how to teach students argumentation,
(6) how to work with the Learning Center and Feinberg Library in teaching writing at Plattsburgh,
(7) how to teach revision
(8) how to differentiate instruction to accommodate diverse learners

The tables of contents for these texts are located at the following sites:

Bean (when you get to this page, click on the "look inside" feature)
Murray
St. Martin's Guide

I have for your perusal a copy of each of these books in my office on the bookshelf immediately to the right of the front door.

I am really excited about this group, and I thank you in advance for any thoughts you have on these proposed readings. Again, if you could share your thoughts by early to mid January, this will enable us to get started perhaps in the second week of spring.

In the meantime, thanks again for all of your hard work, and please have a great, much-deserved break.

Tom

First post

I decided I would create a blog about my experiences of working as a First Year Writing program coordinator at SUNY Plattsburgh, a position that begins in Fall 2008. I have never blogged before, but when my friend Kati suggested that I ought to consider blogging upon moving from MN to NY, this seemed the right thing to do. It seemed, mostly, a place where I could be exploratory in trying to figure out my new position's demands while also being systematic--actually doing data collection of the experience that seemed manageable during what would obviously prove to be a very challenging, unpredictable, exciting time. In the past, I had decided against creating a blog because I did not want to be watched; as I like to say, I still get great satisfaction out of and find necessary pulling my wires out, being off the grid, etc. I guess you could call it paranoia, too, but it's more than that. In any event, blogging felt right as a means of uncovering the meaning of the experience of working s a FYW program coordinator.

So today, I am throwing down the gauntlet. Here it is.

I have another, more concrete reason for doing it today. I will be going to the Council of Writing Program Administrators' summer workshop for new and continuing WPAs--an event that takes place between 7/6 and 7/9 in Denver, CO, this year. I decided to go to this event at the recommendation of two WPAs and mentors of mine at the University of Minnesota, Drs. Tim Gustafson and Thomas Reynolds. When my chair at Plattsburgh, Dr. Tom Morrissey, said he could fund my attendance at this meeting, I quickly signed up. I hoped it would help me develop a map of sorts for the work I'd soon be doing.

I still have that hope today, and it is why I am writing this now. At Denver, I hope to learn a lot, and I will use this blog as a place for recording my perceptions of the experience as it unfolds.

I have gotten started on my map by reading Brown and Enos's The Writing Program Administrator's Resource, and this has been helpful. I hope the workshop will help me extend that map.

Well, that is all for now.